Life with julia

A few weeks ago, I heard that my old yoga studio back home – Modo Yoga Markham – was closing for good, driven by losses they just couldn’t recover from being shut down so long due to the pandemic. They made a teary goodbye post on Instagram, announcing that it was, in fact, the end for them. I didn’t realize how much of an emotional bond I felt to the studio until it dawned on me that I’d never get to step foot inside again.             That yoga studio served as my first introduction to the practice. To this day, I still remember the introductory class I took. I remember the stiffness of my muscles as we flowed through the sequences, and how my body refused to bend the way others so easily did. I remember the beads of sweat that formed on my body and how cathartic each guided…

I have been on a movie binge for the past few months; it pretty much started when Ontario started its yo-yo lockdown phase. I’ve always had a strong love for great cinema, but with all the extra time that I had on my hands, I started checking movies off my “to watch” list at a rapid pace. I left no genre, no director, and no spoken language untouched.             I discovered the movie, “The Farewell”, one evening, as I was browsing for something to watch on Amazon Prime. Strangely enough, I had never heard of it before, despite the fact that Awkwafina had won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress the year before. I didn’t know what to expect but seeing that I was rapidly exhausting my options for movies, I figured that I’d give it a shot.             I didn’t expect most of the movie to be in…

My book – Learning to Learn: Why You Need to Leverage Your Curiosity – is finally published after two years in the making (one year of actual work and another year of hiatus). It was officially published on Amazon (in the e-Book and Paperback form), as well as on the Kobo store, in December 2020. This is a year later than the original publishing date of December 2019. I had decided to take a break when life and school got too hectic in September 2019 and prolonged that break all the way until September 2020, when I suddenly felt this motivation to get back into it and finish it off. I am so glad that I did, and I’m happy to be sharing it with you now. I’ve always seen this book that I’ve been working on as more of a passion project – a published book of words to…

There’s this one line I love from one of T.S Eliot’s poems, and it goes, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Now that the summer is coming to an end, I realize that I have been measuring out this season and the passing of the past 5 months not with coffee spoons, but instead with my daily neighbourhood walks. In my neighbourhood, there’s a circular path you can follow, which has been the route for my daily walks. Walking one lap is a little over 1.5km. I remember on the second day I got back from my exchange at the end of March, I was so eager to be outside, breathing in the cold fresh air, that I walked 4 laps, which is the equivalent of almost 7 km. After that day, the habit of going on my walk hasn’t left and for 5 months, I’ve been…

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much this coronavirus pandemic has changed day-to-day life. News about lockdowns, unemployment claims, and state of emergencies is constantly inundating our newspaper headlines, our devices, our lives. I see presidents, prime ministers, and Ministers of Health on the TV every day, answering the same questions. I’ve also seen pictures and videos of cities — Rome, Paris, New York City — once bustling but now barren. I’ve seen an empty Champs-Élysées during mid-day, a Times Square that broadcasts bright advertisements for maybe three pedestrians below, cathedrals in Rome that sit empty, collecting dust. That change has been startling to witness but what has been even more dramatic for me to see has been the change when it comes to interacting with another human being. Everything that was once so normal and standard — a hug, a handshake, a quick kiss on the cheek…